Zoli's Blog

This gem from Good Morning Silicon Valley is the sequel to Technical Support: Upgrade Nightmares (hat tip: Mike Cannon-Brookes)

Last year a friend of mine upgraded from GirlFriend 6.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it’s a memory hog leaving very little system resources available for other applications. He is now noticing that Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child Processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomena was included in the product brochure or the documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application.

Filed Under: Humor ·

Web 2.0 in the Enterprise – Round …n.. (I can’t keep track)

Posted on May 26, 2006 ·

Stowe Boyd picks up where Ben Metcalfe left off in Web 2.0 doesn’t work in the mothership, but… essentially recommending that Web 2.0 is best introduced in the Enterprise “in a satellite operation at arms length from the rest of your operation”

While this is often the easy solution, I think a case can be made for the seamless mashup of process- and workflow-centric enterprise applications and the more creative, unstructured, collaborative tools like wikis. Case in point is JotSpot’s integration with Salesforce.com based on the Appexhange. Granted their target is not the largest of enterprises, but another example I heard of at SAP’s annual conference is the SAP Help Desk wiki by Socialtext targeting the entire SAP ecosystem. In any case, I agree that spontaneous, project-focused use is how wikis will become adopted in the Enterprise, but at the same time I believe they should be a logical extension of any Enterprise system – SAP, Salesforce.com are starting to recognize, and I think the day when we’ll have both top-down (enterprise sale as part of the large package) and bottom-up (departmental initiative) penetration is not that far.

But then Stowe goes one step further, and this is where the trouble starts:

“…the larger question — whether the enterprise would be more agile, more adaptive, and more of a survivor is it could somehow break away from the need for slow-to-change applications that span the needs of many departments, beholden to many but satisfying none — has not really been addressed by Ben or the others I am interviewing on the on ramp to CTC 2006….
My gut says yes. Enterprises would be better off if their IT departments could move to small, low cost, web-based apps that satisfy local needs — a project group, one campus in Denver, the marketing department in Japan — without having to subordinate local needs to corporate controls. The benefits of enterprise standardization are measured in the IT budget, but the true costs are distributed thoughout the enterprise: less collaboration in the research team leads to slower innovation, a less-thatn-intuitive UI for the sale staff in France leads to lowered sale numbers, and a heavyweight finance solution that slows down invoicing costs serious bank in collection time.”

Oh, boy. When we’re talking about large multinational corporations, as Stowe does in his example, the primary benefit of standardization and integration is NOT measured in the IT budget. The key benefit is competitiveness, simply being able to conduct business. Here’s a case study from my “previous life” when I was implementing SAP systems in exactly these types of companies: The Client, a major test and measurement equipment manufacturer had no real-time visibility of their available-to-promise inventory throughout their own plants accross the US and several countries in Asia and Europe. It typically took them 3 weeks to be able to promise a delivery date to customers. Needless to stay they started to lose business. After the SAP implementation customers could receive the promised delivery date in real-time. For this company the implementation of the standard system was not an option, or driven by IT savings, it was the only way to stay in business.

As a matter of fact, prior to standardizing on SAP the individual plants operated exactly according to Stowe’s ideal model: each doing whatever they wanted, picking their own systems that simply did not talk to each other.

Web 2.0, collaboration is great, it has it’s place in the Enterprise, but so do those “ugly complex” transactional systems. Don’t try to run your supply chain on a wiki

Update , more than three years later: Would You Manage CRM with a Wiki?

Tags: web2.0, enterprise, sap, sapphire06, erp, crm, salesforce.com, jotspot, socialtext, supplychain, standardization, integration, systemintegration, zoliblog

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, Software · Tagged: crm, Enterprise, erp, Integration, Jotspot, salesforce.com, sap, SAPPHIRE06, socialtext, standardization, Supply Chain, system integration, web2.0

Zoho – the “Safer Office”

Posted on May 26, 2006 ·

(Updated)
It’s somewhat ironic that in the very days I’ve just written about Duet, the joint SAP-Microsoft product, I am seriously thinking of escaping from Microsoft-prison, and switching to the most promising WebOffice (Office 2.0) suite. Perhaps I am part of the trend that prompted Vinnie to consider Duet a “nice-to-have” only, but generally too little, too late. (I actually disagree with him, Microsoft’s lock on corporate users is far heavier than on individuals or small businesses.. but that’s another discussion). Update: I’ve had this post half-written for a while, and now we’re getting warned left and right: “use Word in safe mode“, “don’t open Word attachments from Outlook” – the fix from Microsoft is not expected until mid-June. WTF? That’s three weeks away! I am sick of it, just as much as I am sick of Outlook forgetting where the address book is again, freezing on me frequently, and I am especially sick of MS crippling my computer via the automatic Windows updates. While I can’t get rid of Windows (just yet), I can certainly get rid of buggy unsafe Office. Office 2.0, here I come!

But what’s Office 2.0? First of all, terminology: some call it Office 2.0, others Web Office: the point is to have web-based applications that are accessible via a browser, without any download, that will store the data files on the web, too (sorry AjaxWrite, you are out), thus making all my stuff accessible from any computer, any time (as long as I have Internet access).

I’ve been using Writely for a while, so when I first found Zoho Writer, it was a non-event: both editors are equally good, convenience wins, no need to switch. Are any of these Microsoft Word killers? Scoble would laugh it off, they would not stand a feature-by-feature comparison. So what? I am part of the 90% crowd that barely uses 10% of Word’s functionality anyway. Then I found Thumbstack, a web-based “mini-powerpoint”, that allows me to share and collaborate on presentations easily. It does not do a lot of fancy things, amongst them the animated transitions – great, so now I can focus on substance in my presentations, rather than disruptive entertainment. What about a spreadsheet? Zoho Sheet is easy to use, and is aesthetically pleasing – a point so often missed. Is it as poweful as Excel? Of course not. But my Excel knowledge is probably on the level of Lotus 1-2-3 anyway, so for me, Zoho is the Excel-killer. I also have Stikipad, Calcoolate, Box.net … and a few others – all in my Firefox “Office 2.0” bookmark.

The only problem is, when I am not on my own PC, sometimes I forget what’s where… and of course my data files reside with the various service providers, and I am not completely at ease with my digital life being so fragmented. See where I am heading? This move to the Web is liberating, but the plethora of different services causes a bit of chaos. There are two basic concepts to deal with the chaos:

Some of the Web storage companies, like Box.net, Omnipage, Openomny ..etc .. offer their open API’s to application providers, or make one-to-one tight integration and propose that we store all our data centrally, no matter which application accesses them. This is definitely a step forward, in terms of data management, but I am still dealing with point applications, without any integration between them..
The second concept obviously is one-stop-shopping: is there one service that offers ALL the MS Office capabilities (with the common simplification we just discussed)? The answer is increasingly yes: Zoho is releasing new applications at an impressive speed, and they come with 1G of storage. While I would not have left Writely for the sake of Zoho writer only, the abililty to have everyting under one hood is just too damn tempting. I can have Writer, Sheet, Presenter (due out in the very near feature) all from the same source, my data is stored at the same place, and although currently these applications require individual registrations, in the near future they will be available with a single sign-on.

The Zoho guys also promise integration between these applications, and I have reason to believe they will be able to pull it off – after all, they already have the Zoho Virtual Office, which incorporates several of these offices in an integrated fashion. AdvantNet, a 500-person company (of which about a 100 work on Zoho) runs entirely on Zoho Virtual Office. Currently Virtual Office is a downloadable server-side product accessible via the Web, but Zoho will offer a Web-hosted version in the future. Without integration an Office 2.0 is not really Office 2.0, just a collection of online applications. (For those who may not remember, it took Microsoft long years to achieve some level of integration in their Office; for several years and throughout several releases “integration” was copy/paste, and quite painful as such.)

Zoho leverages a good deal between the different product offerings: some parts of Virtual Office make it into the individual applications, and vice versa, some of the standalone products become part of Virtual Office. For example 1G storage is now an implicit part of using the applications, but Zoho Drive will soon be available as a standalone service, too. Ah, and let’s not forget about Zoho Creator, which is exactly what the name suggests: an easy web-application creator. They even go beyond traditional Office functionality, into the transactional world buy providing Zoho CRM, a web based, or downloadable full-featured CRM system. Fully featured means supporting the full sales-related workflow, including vendors and purchase orders all the way to sales orders and invoicing… definitely more then just a “glorified contact manager” as the other guy is often referred to.

Listening and responding to customers is an area a lot of companies fail nowadays – Zoho seems to excel here, too. As part of research for this post I looked at earlier reviews, and several features reported “missing” from Writer are already included in the current product. There is a direct feedback link from the applications, and the longest response time I experienced was a few hours – sometimes it’s just minutes. In comparison, a question I posted on the Writely forum over two weeks ago is still unanswered – I guess those guys are busy finding their place in Google.

Summing it up: Zoho pumps out new applications at an amazing rate (check the site for a few more I haven’t even mentioned). While one by one most of their applications are comparable to at least another web-based application, I am not aware of any other company offering such a complete suite, with that level of support and the realistic prospect of integrating the applications soon. For me the choice is obvious: Zoho is my Office 2.0 Suite.

I’d like to touch on another issue, namely the value of being first, “original” vs. doing something better the second time – but for the sake of readability I’ll break it out to another post – soon.

Update (5/27): Assaf, who made blog conversations really trackable by bringing us co.mment read my post and gave the Zoho Virtual Office a try. His overall impression is positvie, but he also includes some criticism – just as he should. One thing I learned is that Zoho listens and moves fast. Another obeservation (of mine) is that they seem to move in iterations:

The downloadable Zoho Virtual Office has been around for a while (they run a 500-person company on it)
Now they are focusing on individual “Office” components making them available on the Web
Finally they will relase their own hosted version of Virtual Office probably incorporating may improvements they’ve made in the standalone products.

Update (6/6 -yes, the famous 666!): Google Spreadsheet is out, the blogosphere is abuzz, and I won’t have the time to write today, but at least I wanted to point to Ismael’s article, since he arrives to the same conclusions I did…

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Software · Tagged: box.net, excel, ms office, office2.0, Omnidrive, openomy, Outlook, thumbstack, virtual office, web office, Web20, word, Writely, zoho, zoho creator, zoho crm, zoho office, zoho sheet, zoho show, zoho writer

Screw the Trademark, Move on to Web 4.0

Posted on May 25, 2006 ·

From Tom Raftery’s IT Views:

“IT@Cork is a not-for-profit networking organisation for IT professionals. IT@Cork organises regular information and networking events which are free for its members.

One of these events – the upcoming Web 2.0 half-day conference is the target of a cease and desist letter (below) from the legal team of O’Reilly publishers. Basically O’Reilly are claiming to have applied for a trademark for the term “Web 2.0″ and therefore IT@Cork can’t use the term for its conference. Apparantly use of the term “Web 2.0″ is a “flagrant violation” of their trademark rights!

Ironically I invited Tim O’Reilly to speak at this conference last February and his response (which I received on 15th of February) was:

“I would love to be able to do it, but my schedule is just too full for an additional international trip.”

So Tim was aware of the event in February but decided to wait until 2 weeks before the conference to set the lawyers on us.

As I mentioned, IT@Cork is a not-for-profit organisation and doesn’t have the resources available to O’Reilly – what do people suggest we do?”

This is absolutely ridicoulous, but I know what to do.

First of all, stop talking about Web 2.0, let him stick it up … (hm, pardon my French).
Second, skip Web 3.0, too, since that’s the theme of the next O’Reilly conference, (Defining Web 3.0: What’s Next), so he probably trademarked that, too.
Third, while at it, boycott O’Reilly’s expensive conference and attend / organize unconferences instead.
Fourth, move on to Web 4.0, which I have “prior art” on, so he can’t trademark it. I promise to never make any claims on it and it really doesn’t matter what we call it.

Update (5/29): Isn’t it fun to watch mainstream media pick up on a subject days after bloggers have already forgotten it? Her’s the New York Times, and late or not, they’ve made it to Techmeme.

Tags: web2.0, web3.0, oreilly, o’reilly, trademark, web4.0, unconference, zoliblog

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Software ·

Creative Way to Fight Spam

Posted on May 25, 2006 ·

Now that the Blue Frog is officially dead, I’ve come up with a creative way to fight at least some of the spam we all receive. It only works with otherwise legitim products where you can identify not the spammer, but the company whose product or service is being pushed. Find the email address of a company executive; send a polite email telling them from now on you will forward all their spam until they can stop it; then set up an autofilter to do just that: forward all spam to the individual’s email address, deleting the original from yours.

Please note, I’ve only said it’s a creative way, as a theoretical approach, I have no clue about legal ramifications, so am not recommending you follow this method. Perhaps a lawyer-reader can jump in here (?)

Thanks to Panda software for providing the inspiration. (scroll down to updates).

Tags: spam, antispam, autofilter, email, spamfilter, panda, pandasoftware, bluefrog, bluesecurity, zoliblog

Filed Under: Marketing / PR, Misc ·

BOSE: Buy Other Sound Equipment

Posted on May 25, 2006 ·

I love it when consumers give new meaning to acronyms, expressing their view of the product, service or company. I’ve always thought BOSE speakers were overhyped noise-boxes, but that was only my subjective feeling, now here’s a very thorough analysis. I have to admit I don’t understand half his technical discussion, but just because I am a dummy, he could be right: BOSE means: Buy Other Sound Equipment.

I’m glad my stuff would pass David’s judgement: I only have NHT‘s in the house, which, incidentally is quite an interesting acronym itself: Now Hear This. I had them direct shipped over a decade ago when I lived in Pennsylvania, and had no clue until today that we’re almost neighbors, since they are located in Benicia, CA.

Anyway, feel free to add other acronyms re-interpreted by customers.

Update (7/10): Why Bose Sucks Review Resources

Tags: music, speakers, bose, nht, nowhearthis, audiophile, marketing, brand, branding, hype, zoliblog

Filed Under: Bay Area, Misc ·

Wiki Could Have Saved School $250K

Posted on May 24, 2006 ·

This must be my wiki-morning, the second story in a row. I have a backlog of posts to finish and I find myself reacting to news instead. I should follow Stefan’s example, and stay focused .. yet the opportunity is too good to miss.

“At Cobb County school system in Georgia,a spam filter is causing a political dust-up.

Officials say a bid to provide telephone services to the system was gobbled up by the filter, and the bidder was subsequently disqualified, according to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The term “long distance” was apparently what triggered the block.

The school system had requested an e-mail as a follow-up to the formal bid, which had previously been submitted on paper. When they didn’t see the reply, officials dismissed the bidder and awarded the contract to another–more expensive–contractor. Now the bidder and the school system are arguing over whose fault it was.” (source: Blogma)

Here’s a wonderful showcase that calls for a wiki. Set up separate pages for each participating vendor where they directly upload all relevant documentation. If they make changes, the wiki keeps track of versions and shows what the changes are. School district officials who have a role in the decision-making process have access to all vendor pages, so they can compare the bids, plus they can set up their own internal workpages where the create notes, discussions, tables .. i.e. collaborate easily.

At the end of the process they have one compact site, the wiki that includes the official bids as well as all supporting documentation instead of hundreds of emails, cc’s, untrackable attachments.

(I have posted parts of this article on The SME Blog where I am a guest blogger)

Tags: wiki, collaboration, bidding, bidprocess, versioncontrol, zoliblog

Filed Under: Collaboration, Software ·

Turning Cow Manure into Horsepower

Hidden Comment Spam

End Cable Monopoly

Girlfriend 6.0 vs. Wife 1.0 – Sequel to Technical Support: Upgrade Nightmares

Web 2.0 in the Enterprise – Round …n.. (I can’t keep track)

Zoho – the “Safer Office”

Screw the Trademark, Move on to Web 4.0

Creative Way to Fight Spam

BOSE: Buy Other Sound Equipment

Wiki Could Have Saved School $250K

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